The 8 must-read Hillary Clinton emails

The State Department's releases of Hillary Clinton's emails are winding down but are still offering up colorful glimpses into the former secretary of state's four years at Foggy Bottom. The latest batch of roughly 3,000 pages of emails — which State posted in the wee hours of Friday morning after missing a court-ordered deadline to keep up its schedule — showed the lavish praise heaped on Clinton, her aides' gallows humor, and struggles with technology that had Clinton turning to unsecure forms of communication. It also showed how Sidney Blumenthal flooded the secretary's inbox with intelligence and advice, some of which made its way to the White House.

Here are some of the most revealing looks of the State Department's inner workings in the latest release:

Clinton directed staffers to send talking points via nonsecure email, according to a June 2011 email chain, in which her top adviser Jake Sullivan said that staffers were experiencing difficulty sending secure fax messages.

The conversation is partially redacted, so further context is unclear based on the emails themselves, including whether the talking points themselves included any classified information.

In an April 2012 email exchange in which he passed along intelligence about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, longtime confidant Sid Blumenthal also made sure to note the secretary of state's newfound status as an Internet meme with the "Texts from Hillary" Tumblr, which stopped publishing new posts around that time.

"Will keep texts coming. Keep shades on," Blumenthal wrote, referring to the famous image of Clinton on her BlackBerry, sporting a pair of dark sunglasses.

"Can you believe I've become a 'meme'?" Clinton responded. Three minutes later, Blumenthal wrote, "Better than a candidate."

"That's for sure," Clinton wrote.

Blumenthal then offered more advice on how she should frame her accomplishments in preparation for potential political forays in the future.

"Good not to campaign, good not to go to convention, good on revelations on Bin Laden raid, but should use speeches like VMI, Naval Academy to establish new pivot, new redefinition of U.S. strength in new era that also redefines the relative position of others," he wrote.

Despite her own exclusive use of a personal server to conduct official business at the State Department, Clinton expressed surprise at the notion that a staffer was using his own email address for similar purposes.

Top adviser Jake Sullivan passed along an email chain in late February 2011 in which State employee John Godfrey provided a detailed summary of information regarding Libya and its leader, Muammar Qadhafi.

"Worth a read. This guy is very thoughtful," Sullivan wrote to Clinton, who then asked where he worked.

After Sullivan informed her that Godfrey worked at State, Clinton had even more questions.

"Is he in [the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] currently? Or was he in Embassy?" she asked. "I was surprised that he used personal email account if he is at State."

As Clinton and her staff traveled through Africa in August 2012, top adviser Philippe Reines sent some helpful words — or something to that effect — about the threat of Ebola in Uganda, the next stop on their tour.

"The symptoms of EVD/EHF are VERY subtle and easy to miss. So it's vitally important that we all closely monitor each other and keep our eyes peeled so as not to miss any of the following tipoffs or confuse them with other ailments. What's working in our favor is that those infected.will experience ALL of the following near simultaneously," he wrote, before rattling off a list of more than three dozen symptoms, including "Fever with chills," "Maculopapular rash," "coma" and "Disseminated intravascular coagulation."

"And there's one huge misconception about Ebola. The mortaility [sic] rate is not 100% as commonly believed. It is only 90%," he wrote.

The best way to avoid contact, he offered, would be to "not travel to Uganda." For those who are, he wrote, "do not/not come within the minimum safe distance of 101 miles to the affected region. (For context, that's not much farther than the distance between Washington DC and Baltimore.)" Failing that, he said, avoid any medical facility outside of that safe zone.

"If all else fails," he wrote, an accompanying doctor "is carrying forsythia," a plant whose fruit is used in medicine to reduce inflammation.

Chief of staff Cheryl Mills followed up in an attempt to calm nerves, remarking that she had spoken with an official with the Centers for Disease Control, who said there is "little to no risk" in traveling to the capital of Kampala. There is a greater risk, she added, of contracting typhoid or salmonella from water or improperly washed food than the likely fatal hemorrhagic disease.

As Hurricane Isaac bore down on the Gulf Coast in late August 2012, Blumenthal passed along a memo to Clinton that he wanted the White House to see, despite the fact that he remained an unwelcome figure in the administration.

Remarking that George W. Bush's presidency collapsed when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Blumenthal averred that President Barack Obama should make an appearance on the scene of the hurricane's landfall after the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, but before the Democrats convened for their own event in Charlotte, North Carolina, the following week.

The theme of the Republican convention, he wrote, would be to portray Obama's presidency as an inefficient failure. In order to prepare for that, he said, an outfront effort by FEMA before the hurricane would serve as an implicit contrast to Bush and show that the president could use the federal government to respond efficiently to a natural disaster.

"Once the FEMA effort begins, while the Republican convention is meeting, Democrats across the board should point out that the Romney-Ryan budget plans would slash FEMA," Blumenthal advised. "Even if not specified, as little is specified in their plans, drastic FEMA cuts would be inevitable. Put out numbers, a range of numbers. Romney-Ryan would at once be forced on the defensive, make statements defending their plans, calling attention to the real consequences of their ideology, and by filling their message space with the hurricane and the administration's effective management the GOP convention message against Obama as ineffectual and for Romney as the crisis manager/proven-executive/fixer would be overwhelmed."

Clinton's response: "I passed this on to the White House. We'll see what happens."

"All Obama needs to do is turn up, surrounded by commanders, on the Gulf Coast, post-hurricane, on Saturday," Blumenthal replied. "The hurricane is the counter-convention. It provides the counter message without ever having to debate it: Obama is effective, gets things done, government is essential, etc. The event is the message. Plus, on the anniversary of Katrina, the contrast is naturally made, and Bush pops up."

Earlier that month, Blumenthal sent Clinton two memos on Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, citing "sources with access to the highest levels of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and Western Intelligence and security services."

Those sources informed him that Morsi, who would be deposed by a military coup less than a year later, "appears to be a sophisticated strategist" who recognized the public's desire for a period of peace after the 2011 revolution that sacked longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.

"According to a particularly sensitive source with access to the leadership of the MB, Morsi will now focus on dealing with the chaotic state of the Egyptian economy, reassuring foreign businessmen, governments, and investors that the revolutionary period is over, and life is returning to normal," Blumenthal's memo read. "For this reason he decided to end his early, problematic statements on Islamist policy, criticizing both the United States and Israel."

Blumenthal's intelligence also referred to a source within SCAF who relayed that Morsi "went out of his way to build a working relationship with General Abdel Fatah al-Sissi," who would become the country's president in 2014, receiving 93 percent of the public vote in an election that the Brotherhood and most other political parties boycotted.

"Best info yet. Let's discuss before you forward this morning," Clinton instructed Sullivan, apparently on her iPad, according to the email signature.

In a heavily redacted chain from November 2010, Mills passed along to Clinton a series of messages between her and aide Anne-Marie Slaughter while the secretary of state conducted a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The conversation began with a note from Slaughter carrying the subject line "I assume u r running 9:30 call," followed by a series of messages that were largely redacted upon release.

"I can be reached through ops to discuss this so we can serve the larger objectives here," Mills wrote Slaughter in one message.

"So you know what is coming your way - read from bottom up," Mills told Clinton, in forwarding the chain.

"Unbelievable--I am still on [with] Bibi which is equally so," the secretary of state responded.